A YOUNG mother who combines her cottage-based business with bringing up her son has won through to the last 12 of an international design competition.

A YOUNG mother who combines her cottage-based business with bringing up her son has won through to the last 12 of an international design competition.

Kate McKenny is determined to break into the world of high fashion, despite living in St Clears, miles away from the style capitals of the world.

"I want to be somebody. I want to be doing something worthwhile by the time I'm 30," she said yesterday.

"I want to make a mark in the fashion world.

"I love the high life, so what on earth I'm doing in St Clears I don't know. That's what I'm after."

Although she only set up her business, Kate McKenny Designs, a few months ago, getting into the last dozen of the Hat Designer of the Year competition is a big step in that direction.

But it's not all glamour. It's also meant a lot of hard work for Kate, 29, who, as well as running her new business works at decorating pottery part-time and cares for her seven-year-old son Ted and 89-year-old grandmother.

"It all takes a lot of patience and perseverance," she said.

"I've got the school run to do, the sandwich boxes to make. I work part-time on Monday, Wednesday and Friday while Tuesdays and Thursday's are my hat-making days, as well as every night of the week.

"It's a muddle sometimes, but if I didn't love it as much as I do I wouldn't do it."

Brought up by her grandmother in Saundersfoot, Kate has always been interested in fashion, but although her mother was a seamstress and her sister makes wedding dresses, she opted instead for a surface decoration course when she left school to attend Carmarthenshire College of Technology and Art.

She later worked at nearby Gwili Pottery decorating ceramics.

But then she went to work for renowned Carmarthenshire-based hat designer Elizabeth Comber, training with her for three years before starting out on her own and becoming one of only an estimated 15 to 20 milliners working in Britain today.

Urged on by friends and family, her plasterer husband Jason transformed the spare bedroom in their pink bungalow home into a workshop.

Overlooking the hay pasture of a nearby farm, she designs and produces unique fashion hats for weddings and occasions such as Ascot, specially commissioned by customers.

"I want to make hats fun and interesting again," she said.

"Hats have been out of fashion for years, but now with stars such as Boy George, Kelly Osbourne and Madonna wearing them, they are starting to come back," she said.

"But a lot are factory made and what you buy from a shop does not always suit you. People don't make them anymore and people certainly don't know how to wear them. I think it's all about confidence. It's just the way you wear it. You have to have a sense of fashion."

Customers come to the house to talk about what they want and to be fitted. Each hat then takes Kate about two days to make and another day to dye to the exact colour wanted.

The hats cost between #120 and #180 each, depending on the materials used.

"It's still early days," said Kate. "It's been very much word-of-mouth so far. I haven't even had any business cards printed."

The Hat Designer of the Year competition Kate is now a finalist in is run by Hat Magazine. The event attracts entrants from as far away as the United States and the Netherlands and later this month Kate will travel to London to deliver her three designs by hand. If she wins, part of her prize will be a course of work experience at the London workshop of renowned hat designer Stephen Jones.

Kate has already told Jason that if that happens she'll be taking up the offer, but has no intention of moving permanently from the area, at least not until Ted has grown up.

"I sometimes think we don't realise how lucky we are to be brought up in an area like this," said Kate.

"It's not going to be all work and no play, otherwise I won't do it.

"I don't want my business to run me, I want me to run it.

"I'm so excited about it all.

"Sometimes when I look out into the field from my workshop window, it's like being sprinkled by gold dust."